How realistic is Star Trek’s Tamarian language? - Darmok and Jalad - eviltoast

I thought this video was absolutely fascinating throughout, even the ad.

The main thrust of it is about how natural Earth languages make use of idiom and metaphor frequently, and how Tamarian is subtly different from this. But we do also make use of a similar direct literary allusion, to different degrees in different languages. Mandarin has a number of examples, but we can also point to “crossing the Rubicon” as an example in English.

More recently, the use of memes has taken on a very Tamarian-like role.

  • wheeldawg@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    7
    ·
    1 year ago

    This was always my favorite episode of the series, just due to the novel concept of communication. Upon a rewatch years later, I realized the episode was just ahead of its time. I mean we always had phrases like this, but with the huge rise of memes in the last 20 years the amount of phrases like this has grown exponentially.